COVID-19 has magnified global food insecurity and is driving unhealthy eating and worsening malnutrition, food experts say. They have called for deliberate global investment in food as medicine on the back of growing diet-related illnesses.

Famed Greek physician, Hippocrates, foretold the future of food. He is attributed to have said: ‘Let food be thy medicine and let medicine be thy food’. COVID-19 has pushed the conversation about food as medicine onto the world agenda as more people are paying attention to their health and increasingly what they eat.

“COVID 19 has exposed American population to infectious diseases, and it has started off the conversation around food is medicine and how we need to reset our food system to create higher quality and more nutrient-dense food,” physician and author, Mark Hyman, told a plenary session at the virtual ‘Resetting the Food System from Farm to Fork’ dialogue co-hosted by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) and Food Tank.